Swedish furniture manufacturer IKEA has made the decision to ditch its use of wooden pallets in favour of paper. The paper pallet is a single use pallet which is fully recyclable and by making this change they have estimated they will save up to 10% every year on their distribution costs. It is estimated that the furniture giant use approximately 10 million wooden pallets every single year to help cart there vast range of products around the world.
Is switching from wood to paper going to make that much of a difference?
In the long term, it’s certainly not the answer as there is still a lot of work to do once you’ve used the paper pallet, it has to be broken down and rebuilt. IKEA are happy in the short term though because of the savings they will see as a result of the move.
Make no mistake, IKEA aren’t just thinking about the environment with this change, if at all. In fact, the paper based versions of the pallets are significantly lighter which means fuel savings (as well as environmental savings, let’s not forget). It will also reduce wear on forklifts and other machinery, meaning there will be less spent on repairing faults and buying new equipment.
We can see that by making the pallets lighter, there will be positive changes to both the company and the environment but the raw material is still the same, the pallets are still made from wood. Wooden pallets can be re-used as many times as safely possible and once they are over the hill, there are numerous pallet recycling companies that will happily take them and refurbish them for resale. Recycling companies such as these significantly reduce the amount of waste associated with pallets making them extremely environmentally friendly.
What do you think? Does IKEA have the environment at the forefront of its mind, or is bottom line more important?
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